Customer service reps aim to wow with hotel-style hospitality

Available now at a hospital near you: Customer-friendly VIP services once reserved for luxury hotels.

At Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, a full staff of patient service representatives is at your beck and call, ready to hail a cab for a family member's shopping venture, notarize a legal document, supply you with menus from area restaurants, or move your car for you in a pinch.

Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital in Hollywood, and Delray Medical Center now offer "room-service dining," with extensive menus of meals cooked to order and delivered any time of the day.

The best part: The concierge-like service and call-up dining are complimentary, part of the South Florida hospital industry's increasing emphasis on improving patient satisfaction.

What's with the sudden push to give the dreaded hospital stay a more luxurious feel for the average Joe? While hospital executives say it's about doing right by the patient, experts point to increasingly patient-focused federal mandates as key drivers.

"This whole notion of being more consumer-friendly, patient-centered, VIP-treated in a hospital setting is not unrelated to the fact that hospitals are being graded, evaluated and paid into the future based on patient satisfaction," said Linda Quick, president of the South Florida Hospital & Healthcare Association. "Amenities are clearly part of that experience."

And South Florida, with its reputation for luxury and its stature as one of the nation's most competitive hospital markets, is ripe for a trend that puts the hospital in hospitality.

"We do have an embarrassment of riches," Quick said. "You name the [medical] service, and we've got more than one."

In that cutthroat climate, the taxpayer-supported Broward Health Medical Center is taking more than just a page from the luxury hotel industry. Within the past year, the hospital has hired away key staff from some of the resort world's biggest names: chief experience officer Genevieve Conroy from The Ritz-Carlton and nutritional services director Kenneth Bates from Walt Disney World.

"We brought The Ritz-Carlton mindset here: How can we wow?" Conroy said. "We're using that every day."

It all starts in the newly revamped hospitality department. Every day, seven customer service representatives make rounds to each of the estimated 450 patients staying at the hospital, asking how to make their experience more enjoyable. They use a prepared script and follow a "Be a Hero" behavioral standards guidebook with sections like "Bringing Joy to Patients."

The customer service reps take their mission seriously, Conroy said. Not only do they work with patients' families to help them make use of idle time, pointing them to area restaurants, hotels, grocery stores and entertainment venues, but they also help patients trouble-shoot issues that come up unexpectedly, like pet care or baby-sitting.

One rep moved a man's car to the visitor's lot after discovering he had come in as an emergency patient and had parked outside the ER. Then there was the rep who found out a recently discharged patient had no way to get her medication. He picked it up from the pharmacy and brought it to her home.

"We've established a culture where our employees are going the extra mile," Conroy said. "We want to make sure we are building patient loyalty and referrals, and the way we do that is by offering a world-class experience."

The idea is to give the place a "home away from home" kind of a feeling, said Jenny Mackie, Broward Health Medical Center's patient experience manager.

For patient Dane Skuda, 66, of Pompano Beach, the personalized service at Broward Health Medical Center has made a tough situation easier to bear. The customer service staff, he said, "is always there, taking care of whatever needs you have, keeping an eye on you," even calling family members to fill them in on his condition.

"They make everybody feel special, not just me," said Skuda, now in his third stay at Broward Health for complications from heart and lung illness.

While few local hospitals have broken out with concierge-like amenities the way Broward Health has, more are adding resort-style room service to their dining options. At Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital, young patients can call up and order french fries, cheese pizza, cheeseburgers, chicken fingers and an assortment of kosher, gluten-free and regular-menu items any time from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. — as often as they'd like, said food and nutrition services supervisor Elena McLean.

Delray Medical Center caters to an elderly clientele that may find it difficult to call for three meals a day, so the Expressly For You dining program's "hosts" and "hostesses" take each patient's breakfast, lunch and dinner orders from a menu of chef's specials and alternatives, said food and nutrition director Donnie Berger.